Tag: Mexico

The Alpha and Omega of Yoga

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The day before Christmas, I got up early, put on at least three layers and went off through the cold city to attend my yoga class on the exposed roof of an old colonial building. I say old, since you might think that colonial was the name of a modern style. At first, it was just me and the teacher, T., a young woman of thirty-something. T. is a modern dancer, as in modern dance, and the strongest woman I have ever met. Plus, an accomplished yoga and Pilates teacher. She is also a beauty, smart and kind. My only lament is that I am not a better student. Younger, stronger, more flexible and better at yoga. More Cirque du Soleil.

At first, I thought T. would justifiably beg off teaching just one person. But then another young woman came, with her son A.—a five year old. I wondered what the boy was going to do the whole time after the teacher decided two was enough to justify giving a class. But the boy settled down on one of the woven reed mats, and T. brought him a yoga matt to lay on top of it.

When we began, A. began as well, throwing himself into each posture. His mother is very good at yoga, so he must have seen her do the asanas before. He stuck with it for nearly an hour, never seeming to lose interest. Once his mother took him off to go to the bathroom, a small journey that took precedence over yoga class protocol, where adults simply do not get up and go looking for a bathroom.

A’s little body was supple, willing and contained. Mine, stiff, willing but sometimes a little too ponderous to lever and bend. Still, I found A. an inspiration. After all, as T. says over and over, it is the intent that matters, and the boy was my refreshing guide in that.

All in all, I would say on the spiritual level, A. was also further along than me. He did not worry about keeping up, doing it right—or doing it at, since at times he simply stopped, turned around and looked at his mother or—with curiosity—over at me. T. made frequent visits to his mat and, with the skill and delight of a kind mother, adjusted his leg forward or back, and said, “This hand” or “Other leg! And: “Eso es!” “That’s it!” That in itself was worth the price of admission.

A. could do the bridge—a kind of back bend—with the top of his head on the mat. I think it should be called the crab pose. I could just barely do it. His mother, like T., can do it with her head far above the mat, forearms extended—a full wonderful upward bow.

Still, I admired A’s attitude, his participation, his interest in doing what his mother did. I knew very little about him, and so afterwards, in that lingering moment of camaraderie, I approached his mother to ask about him.

She asked me where I came from. I said I lived there in the city.

She said, “But before, where did you live?”

“California,” I said.

She took that in. I asked about her child. She is Mexican, the boy’s father, English. I asked the boy’s age and mentioned that I wasn’t sure whether he was a boy or a girl.

“A lot of people have that trouble,” she said.

“He’s a handsome lad,” I said. And a joy to be in a yoga class with, though I did not say that.

A. and I—I realized—might be to some extent exceptional, in the sense that, well, we might be exceptions. How many five-year old’s do yoga? How many seventy-five year old’s? Oh, all right, in the spirit of yoga’s purity, I confess to being seventy-six.

Actually, seventy-six and a half.

His skin is smooth and baby-like, mine more like that of a baby elephant—or rhinoceros. I had been hanging out with a five-year old—he beginning his life, me delaying the end with every trick I can think of. He was mildly curious about me. I delighted in his naturally yogic frame of mind: playful, determined, persistent, unafraid.

What other class have I been in with such an age difference? Alston Chase, at that prep school on a hill, near tears over Ruskin’s descriptions of classical Italian or Greek landscapes, Wendell Clausen, Professor of Latin and Comparative Literature, teaching Catullus’ poems at that college along the Charles. Andrew Jaszi teaching 19th Century German short stories in his Hungarian-accented German. Egon Schwartz doing the same, at the same place, but in German with an Austrian accent. It was shock enough when women from the neighboring famous women’s college joined our classes. But they were roughly my age. Once I heard about a twelve-year old genius studying at the college. But a five-year old? Unheard of.

But this yoga is a different matter. You don’t have to know German or Latin. You just have to have a somewhat in tact spine and a few willing muscles, and joints that haven’t been too neglected over the years. With Latin and German, about poetry and story, the teaching came from the professor. One’s own insights came later, little by little. But with yoga the information comes from one’s body, from inside. It’s as if the teacher says, open this book, read inside it. Loosen this joint, stretch this tendon—incrementally—tighten the stomach and the thighs. Look at the end of your nose—no straining allowed. This is what I can do now, your body says, and if you think about your breathing, it makes it easier for me.

“Be mindful of your intention,” T. says over and over.

A. ponders none of this. He just does it—with varying degrees attention, as is true for all of us.

Regretfully, just do it sounds something like a corporate slogan, by definition devoid of spirituality, subtlety or any real substance—nonsense, like that devilishly good brew that is called “the real thing.”

Except that A. is really the real thing, and me, too. All of us in the class are really the real thing. Our bending and twisting and breathing—most of all the breathing—and I suppose the constant awareness of age. A’s age and my age. He the alpha, me the omega. Contrasts exist, and the trick is—little by little—to accept them and therewith loosen the grip of their significance.

An Invitation to Meet My Cats

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Serkalem Fasil
℅ The Individuals at Risk Program
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20003
U.S.A.

Dear Eskinder Nega, via your wife Serkalem Fasil,

I hope this letter finds you reasonably well, given that you have been imprisoned by your government. What has happened to you could happen to any citizen in the world, if individual protections of free speech are not written into the law and enforced by strong and just courts, and supported by humane governments. It is too bad that governments do not realize that they are stronger—not weaker—when they protect these basic rights of free speech for all citizens.

I am an American who has been dwelling in Mexico for some years, where I live and write (sometimes paint, as well) with my partner Dianne. If it would reach you, I would send you a copy of my novel Playing for Pancho Villa, which people say is a good yarn, albeit both sweet and sad—a love story set in 1916 revolutionary Mexico.

It is hard for me to imagine how your government, or any government, can justify putting you in prison—for voicing your opinions about it.

I hope that you are released soon, along with any of your countrymen who have also been imprisoned for voicing dissent. And that you can get up in the morning, have your coffee, talk to your cat, and hold your wife’s hand and watch the sun come up together—with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I hope I get to meet you when you leave prison. Maybe you will come to Mexico and give a talk in my small colonial city Guanajuato, and have some Mexican food with us, at our house, with your wife, and talk to my two cats—who I am sure would be very interested to meet a writer from Ethiopia. As I would.

Best Wishes,

Sterling Bennett

Kafka’s Dreidel ~ “Der Kreisel”

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From his Nachlass (literary effects) 1904 – 1924

(English translation below)

Ein Philosoph trieb sich immer dort herum, wo Kinder spielten. Und sah er einen Jungen, der einen Kreisel hatte, so lauerte er schon. Kaum war der Kreisel in Drehung, verfolgte ihn der Philosoph, um ihn zu fangen. Dass die Kinder lärmten und ihn von ihrem Spielzeug abzuhalten suchten, kümmerte ihn nicht, hatte er den Kreisel, solange er sich noch drehte, gefangen, war er glücklich, aber nur einen Augenblick, dann warf er ihn zu Boden und ging fort. Er glaubte nämlich, die Erkenntnis jeder Kleinigkeit, also zum Beispiel auch eines sich drehenden Kreisels, genüge zur Erkenntnis des Allgemeinen. Darum beschäftigte er sich nicht mit den großen Problemen, das schien ihm unökonomisch. War die kleinste Kleinigkeit wirklich erkannt, dann war alles erkannt, deshalb beschäftigte er sich nur mit dem sich drehenden Kreisel. Und immer wenn die Vorbereitungen zum Drehen des Kreisels gemacht wurden, hatte er Hoffnung, nun werde es gelingen, und drehte sich der Kreisel, wurde ihm im atemlosen Laufen nach ihm die Hoffnung zur Gewissheit, hielt er aber dann das dumme Holzstück in der Hand, wurde ihm übel und das Geschrei der Kinder, das er bisher nicht gehört hatte und das ihm jetzt plötzlich in die Ohren fuhr, jagte ihn fort, er taumelte wie ein Kreisel unter einer ungeschickten Peitsche.

A philosopher always used to hang around places where children played, and if he saw a boy with a top, he lay in wait. The moment the top began to spin he followed it, ready to grab it. That the children cried out in alarm and tried to keep him away from their top, that didn’t seem to bother him. If he plucked up the toy while it was still spinning, then he was happy—but only for a moment, and then he threw it on the ground and went off. The truth was, he believed that insight into the smallest things was enough to allow him insight into the bigger ones. It seemed too hard to approach the big concepts directly. Knowing the microcosm meant, at the same time, knowledge of the macrocosm. And so, whenever children got ready to spin a top, each time new hope rose in him and became breathless certainty that this time his enterprise would succeed. But each time he held the dumb wood in his hand, a dark mood fell upon him. And the disapproval of the children—which he had not taken in before and now did—drove him away stumbling and wobbling, as if he were a top himself, lashed by the children’s whip. — Translation by me, SB.

Sniffing Out a Possible Third Novel

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If you write two historical novels—spaced sixteen years apart, then you have to write a third one, so you’ll have a trilogy. Which I suppose is something like a triptych – a painting with three panels, an idea—in writing at least—originating with the Greeks themselves.

Because of the spacing between the first two novels—1900 and 1916 in the history of Mexico, and following the rules of compulsion, mixed with a little obsession, the third novel should be either sixteen years earlier, 1884, or sixteen years later, 1936.

Right away I see trouble with 1936. It is too close to my birth date of 1937. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that historic date, even though I was born in Morristown, New Jersey and not in Erongaricuaro, Michoacán. A better date would be 1884, when Porfirio Díaz was beginning the second part of his thirty-year reign, though he had really never given up power during the interregnum when others seemed to take over, Juan Méndez and Manuel González. In all, the old devil served seven terms as president of Mexico. Surely, that must provide a good deal more material.

But what about elements of Novel One and Novel Two? Why not the grandson of One coming together with the daughter of Two? Of course, some mathematics would be involved to get them together in a plausible time and place. The there would have to be a plot that was somehow related to the two earlier plots—suppression of the Yaquis in the first, and a glimpse of the Mexican Revolution in the second. Perhaps—looking forward again—something to do with Lázaro Cárdenas’s land distribution or his nationalization of foreign oil companies, specifically of American and British-Dutch oil companies.

We know this happened, but we don’t know why those countries didn’t react by invading Mexico in order to set this right, since there is a long precedent for this kind of behavior. This is the first of the questions that come up. And so we begin to speculate, so that we will know what we don’t know. The answer lies in this direction. Porfirio Díaz had seen to it that the Americans and British had built a system of railroads. From then until 1936, Mexico had imported a lot of weapons and studied enough warfare in order to know how to leave one million of their own dead in the Revolution. Perhaps there was a certain parity in weaponry at that time. The losses to the U.S. and Britain would have been considerable. Not to mention again to Mexico.

Plus, the Depression was still making itself felt in the U.S., and Germany and Japan were rearming. The U.S. and Britain had to do the same. Perhaps they made a deal with Cárdenas, that Mexico would keep selling the oil and agree to pay for the expropriations. Until that agreement was reached, there must have been some skullduggery. And since I like skullduggery—at a distance, it seems as if this period could be a fruitful time for the Third Novel.

I have arrived at this point without doing any research. Guided only by the Mexican saying: Te conozco, Mosco, por tu zumbidito – I know you, Fly, by the way you buzz. Which is as much to say, I know enough about Mexican-American history to be able to predict certain patterns. Up to this point, I have been sniffing only.

I have read a little since.

There was a strong Mexican Petroleum Workers Union—the formation of which the outsiders had tried to block, sometimes by illegal tactics (hopefully a source of skullduggery); the foreign petroleum companies were making much higher profits Mexico than in the U.S; a strike ensued with popular support; the Mexican Supreme Court sided with the strikers, as did the president of Mexico; the Court ordered the foreign companies to pay 26,000,000 pesos in back wages; the companies resisted; a boycott of Mexican goods and products ensued; the U.S. press vilified Mexico; in the U.S. State Department, a war was underway between friends of Mexico and potential enemies of Mexico—the latter fearing a Bolshevik-communist adversary, or a Fascist one at their border; in order to survive the boycott and embargo, Mexico had to trade oil for money and machinery with European fascist countries; a political faction inside Mexico, in disagreement with Cárdenas’s nationalizing, threatened internal revolt; Josephus Daniels, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico liked president Cárdenas, and vice versa; Roosevelt listened to Daniels and saw a kindred soul Cárdenas; and so there was no invasion of Mexico; Cárdenas went to the conservative Catholic bishops of Mexico and asked for help in raising the cash to pay compensation for the nationalized oil companies; the bishops ordered the word spread throughout Mexico by dint of his priests’ sermons; thousands of women responded by assembling in front of the Palacio de Belles Artes, Mexico City, on April 12, 1938 with donations—from chickens to jewelry—to pay off the foreign debt; on June 7, 1938 President Cárdenas issued the decree that created Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), “with exclusive rights over exploration, extraction, refining and commercialization of oil in Mexico.”

Is there material enough in this saga of Mexicanization? I think so. But I have more research to do, I think, in order to find a yarn to spin.

The Archaeology of Fathers

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Sometimes I lie in bed between dark and dawn wondering about my own assertions about the way the world is. That is to say—about my own writing.

I describe images, my characters act out a story.

Saying what a story is about is very different from the original storytelling. The latter is about invention, sculpting, spinning the tale—with the hope that the way I tell it will lead to the reader’s suspension of disbelief—to the reader’s willingness to believe what I am saying.

Another part of it has to do with my own need to believe—easier, if the book, on some deeper level, is telling me something about myself. Of course, it is, but how is far from clear. What is the invented Frank Holloway telling me, in my novel Playing for Pancho Villa? In what way are his adventures also therefore mine? Why would I even think or need to tell such a story? To what extent am I re-inventing myself?

The images and sequences I paint (laying down the brush strokes), how do I decide which color and where to lay the stroke? I have few answers for these questions—unless it has to do with all the fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and beyond, that stretch all the way back to the beginning of my line. The mothers and aunts were not silent, and I learned from them. But the fathers were quiet. I want to know about them. Being me may depend on it. But since they were so mute, through disposition or death, whom am I to ask?

Unless it is myself. Telling a story about a father—my grandfather, in this case—is, I suppose, my way of talking with the silent ones. First, re-inventing them—since to my knowledge my grandfather Frank never crossed the Mexican border on his father’s mare.

My brother recently sent me some genealogy records. A customs entry shows that Frank Bennett re-entered the U.S. on a ship from Honduras. Was it my grandfather? My brother assures me it wasn’t. But there is no proof either way.

I read a recent article in the New York Times about soldiers missing in action in WWII, whose remains are never found, and how it haunts family members, some of whom never even knew the missing relative.

Is that who these fathers are? Missing in action? And I am simply one more relative looking for them, lifting the spade—digging where I think they lie? Is this what my storytelling is about?

Cause and Effect

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I can lie in my bed at 6 am and hear the traffic cop that stands in front of the Compañia blowing his whistle. In my city this is a special art. It is not the usual kind of where the cop lets first one flow of traffic go ahead, then the other. No, in my little colonial city, it’s as if the cars don’t run on fuel, and the only reason they move at all is because the traffic policeman is blowing his whistle. He never raises his hand to signal “Stop!” or “Now it’s your turn!” He simply blows his whistle, as if it were he alone—with his whistle—that made it all happen. He is the perfect example of cause and effect. It is even possible he has read Aristotle. How else would he know to use his whistle in this way? He has clearly chosen one of the philosopher’s four elements. Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

His choice was Air, which rises from where it is—to where it is going. And, in the process, because the idea is so strong, the traffic is also carried along, from where it is, to where it is going.

Of course, there could be another explanation. That would have to do with the concept of Authority, which is strong in Mexico. Which is also mixed with strong Belief. My cop commands with his whistle. The traffic, all together, obeys and keeps on moving. None of it has anything to do with maximizing traffic flow. It has everything to do with Authority. The cars would not know to move forward without his hectoring whistle. They are not whistled forward, rather they are commanded forward.

Of course, there is another possibility, and it deserves to be mentioned along with the others. It is the doctrine of Hope, which is strong in Mexico. It exists in a context of belief that thing will not get better. Hence, the usefulness of Hope—the brave persistence in thinking things will change for the better, even though you know they won’t.

I do not understand this pessimism, but there it is. As a result, Mexicans have developed a manner of cooperation that, in my limited experience, is rare in other countries. And that is the concept of uno a uno—one car from this flow of traffic, then one car from the other. I find that Mexicans take great pains to observe uno a uno—except when they don’t want to. In which case it is best to let the other car go first. But generally it works. (My Mexican friend apoplectically disputes my last short sentence.)

And so, I can lie in my bed and enjoy what I know is the perfect arrangement. The whistle blows, moving the cars forward—even though it is uno a uno, in spite of all the Air moving from where it is—in the traffic cop’s lungs—to where it is going—a few centimeters beyond the whistle’s whistle opening. Resignation, Hope, Authority and Cooperation all function at the same time. Keeping the world moving even as I lie snug in my bed, safe for the time being from almost all cause and effect. Unless, of course, my cat Lilus, a local Authority, arrives and has decided that I should meet my Duty and stroke her ears for the effect she demands.

The Killing

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With great frequency, climbing the two hundred and three stairs to our house in Guanajuato, I see young A. sitting with his friend on the stairs just outside his very modest house—crude stone walls with dirt for mortar, metal laminate roof. A. is young and shy. Over the years, I have engaged him by asking him questions about mathematics. It started out as two and two, then two and two and two; then, more complicated additions. We used to call him The Accountant, and he seemed to like that. He’s a bright kid. Maybe six or seven now.

His sister I. used to sit a little higher on the stairs with her next door neighbor M. At first, they just tittered when we spoke to them. I used to say, “I’m hearing what you’re saying,” because their heads were always very close together, as they chatted, and their eyes gleamed with pre-teen secrecy. Of course, I couldn’t hear; they knew that; but just being addressed sent them into a pre-teen tizzy. Especially by an old guy who was a gringo at that. Then, abruptly, I. had a boyfriend and M. sat alone on the steps, looking abandoned. The boy was older. I. needed the attention. She had probably just turned thirteen. Many girls are pregnant at that age, giving in to the pressure of an older boy. Now I notice she is no longer around. I don’t know what has become of her.

The Accountant and I. are brother and sister, I think. I am not sure. Their father’s name I never quite learned. When I went off in the morning to write at the Café Antik, I used to see him returning from the mine—I’ve never learned which one. He was on the night shift. And then he had his accident. Something fell on his head, and chances are it was part of the mine. He seemed different afterward. He drank more, he made less sense when he talked and he began asking for handouts. He was out of work a lot, I am told because he went on binges, and perhaps because the mine wanted sober miners who were not a danger to other miners in the sense of not being able to carry out basic responsibilities.

He began hanging out with the Usual Suspects, in the privada—side alley—just down the steps from us. We are currently traveling, and so I do not know exactly what happened, except that two days ago—according to the police—he was attacked in broad daylight (noon) by someone coming out of the privada. The person came up behind him and I suppose struck him—possibly on the spot where the mine had struck him earlier.

And now he is dead.

I have not used the word murdered. If someone killed him, I am fairly sure it was not premeditated. In one previous incident, which I have already written about—the incident of the brick fight, one of my first posts on the neighborhood—I was standing six feet from a neighbor when Q. walked up to him—minutes after the brick fight—and struck him on the head four times with a light metal pipe. In another incident, much later, I saw T. come up behind his drunk father, who had climbed up from the privada to rail against a public neighborhood organizing meeting. T. stood behind his father holding a good-sized rock, poised, it seemed, to bash him on the head, if there was no other way to control him. A very curious behavior for an otherwise obedient son. So in our barrio, bashing someone on the head is not an unusual recourse for punctuating disputes.

The Police—through their own connections—have a recording of the attack, from the surveillance cameras. There is not much more I can say at this distance, or want to say. Whoever attacked the victim must have been high on the usual substances: paint thinner, MagicMarker, airplane glue, etc. The effect of those chemicals is that you are aggressive and have very poor judgment—such as carrying out the act right in front of the cameras.

The neighbors are lying low, because now we enter the period when the privada realizes they’re in trouble again—with the police—and they are sending out their aunts, mothers and wives to find out who knows what. Of course, no one is saying very much—including, at this point, myself.

Greeting Josefina and Remembering Mateo

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I stopped by the church steps today and greeted Josefina, who sat in her usual place on the bottom step. She replied, “Mande?”—”Yes?” with like a school child afraid she has is being called to account for some mistake. “How are you?” I asked. “Fine,” she said.

I can see a kind of generalized confusion in her face when she addresses me. I hate the term mental illness. But I don’t think she’s all there. Then, of course, who of us is “all there”? She does what she does. I have no idea where she goes when she’s not at the steps.

There was another “beggar” that wandered up and down the side of the canyon that is Guanajuato. His name was Mateo. Most of his front teeth were missing, but his smile was always very much in tact. I usually could not understand what he was saying when I dropped 10 pesos onto his very dirty palm. I am embarrassed to say that. It’s like talking about an animal, but I also think twice before petting a dog that clearly has all kinds of problems.

Mateo suffered from some kind of mental problem, too. And I would think, from loneliness, as well. I know people were maintaining him. Once in a while he would appear washed and in warm new clothes. I think that is very typical of Mexico, and probably of most places in the world. People feed and clothe people like Josefina and Mateo.

There seems otherwise to be no solution for “saving” them. In Mexico, to the best of my knowledge, there are no agencies that sweep them up, wash them, feed them psychiatric drugs, dress them and give them a new life. I have no idea whether their families still exist or whether their families, still there, have given up on them. Recently, I have concluded that Mateo may be dead. He no longer shows up. On walks around the ring road on the side of the canyon, I look down into various vacant, overgrown pieces of land that have not been build on—looking for Mateo, or for what may be left of him. An old coat, a pair of worn shoes—still connected to Mateo.

Mexconnect Review of “Playing for Pancho Villa”

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Mexconnect.com’s book reviewer James Tipton reviewed my novel Playing for Pancho Villa. I suppose all writers gnash their teeth over parts of reviews. I will let you find the spot where I gnash. Still, it’s good to get some exposure, since that is the challenge facing a small press and a new writer.

According to Mexconnect, more than 500,000 people read their site each month—80% of them from the U.S. and Canada.
More than 54,000 other web sites link to it, and it ranks in the top 1% of all Internet sites in the world.
It has become Mexico’s most-read site in English.

This is James Tipton’s review:

Playing for Pancho Villa
By Sterling Bennett
Libros Valor, Mazatlan, Mexico, 2013
Available from Amazon Books: Paperback (and Kindle)

The year was 1916. Young Frank Holloway “got mercury poisoning working in the Silver Creek Mine in Mogollón, New Mexico.” To recover his health, his doctor told him to get away and go have “an adventure.”

And so… perhaps lacking judgment because of the mercury poisoning, Frank opted for danger as well as adventure. On Tosca, his beloved mare, he rode south, and fifty miles west of El Paso he crossed the border into Mexico.

Frank, “with a fool’s luck, managed to pick his way… between horse thieves from both sides, the Texas rangers who pursued them, Pancho Villa’s Dorados, General Pershing’s 6,000 gringo troops who were chasing Villa after the raid at Columbus, New Mexico, the Carrancista forces who were maneuvering to block Pershing, weapons smugglers who supplied all sides, common bandits with scars across their eyebrows and twitching hands, private agents who protected the alfalfa and coal supplies, horses, mules, and even locomotives for American and European mining operations and finally the occasional outlaw Apache — banished long since from their tribes for crimes against their own people….” That’s enough for any lone traveler to deal with!

Two weeks into Mexico, Frank shot a hungry Carrancista officer who had just shot a young boy with a limp, who was out caring for his goats. Frank’s own almost spontaneous action plunged him into other situations and dilemmas: “He wished he had not fired at the man. He wished the man had not wanted mutton and then drawn his pistol on a boy who limped. He wished the boy had not thrown stones, or even been there.”

After the boy, not seriously wounded, was cared for, Frank washed in the stream, while the boy’s mother, apparently a widow, washed his shirt and trousers. Later, under a U.S. Army blanket, she hugged his naked body all night long, while her own mother and her own son slept on pallets next to them.

In addition to danger at almost every turn, Frank, as he continued his adventure, also continued to come across fascinating Mexican women, two in particular: Doña Mariana (of the narrow waist and long green dress) and the heroin-addicted Sofía de Larousse. He was not particularly experienced with women, as passages like this suggest: “He had never touched a woman’s shoe with a woman still in it.”

He also met, several times, Pancho Villa himself, and only because he could play the piano (Alexander’s Ragtime Band) did Villa spare his life. In a later confrontation, the frustrated Frank admonished the mercurial Villa: “With all due respect… I wish you could ask us for something without threatening to kill us.”

The whole story is told, incidentally, by Frank’s grandson Liam Holloway, who had heard many of his grandfather’s stories, “which interested no one in the family,” and who, with his sister, had recently discovered a steamer trunk in the old barn, filled, of course, with his grandfather’s old notebooks and letters. This is a common story-telling device, and it still works for me.

Frank does have “a girl back home,” Rosa Marta, but she is not a developed character. We do hear that Frank had never been “inside her” (That sounds ever so slightly crass, taken out of context—SB) because she “required something more formal.” In fact she seems, at least for the course of this adventure, to be of little concern to Frank. Frank finds himself far more interested in Sofía de Larousse, who, even in the midst of the life-threatening mayhem of the Mexican civil war, made him feel something “he had never felt before.” To make room for her on his bed, “he lifted the Winchester and put it on his other side.” He begins to realize that knowing a woman “was not always possible and not even necessary, if there was friendship and respect.”

In addition to these two fascinating women, both strong in different ways, we also meet the wise and wonderful Chinese man, Mr. Wu, talented with needles and arrows, and the devoted and philosophical young doctor, Juan Carlos, who had also rescued a young boy, shortly after his father was killed in battle. In their efforts to survive the chaos of the civil war, the lives of all of these characters become more and more connected and intertwined.

Playing for Pancho Villa has a feeling of authenticity to it which I assume is because the author, who lives in Guanajuato, knows Mexico well… and of course because he is a thoughtful observer and a natural story teller. There are a few flaws (How could the reviewer have said such a thing!), but nevertheless Sterling Bennett tells a good story and, as in all good stories, his principle characters are ones we come to care about; and, indeed, we feel their absence for awhile after we have finished the novel.

M. Evades a Future

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Awake at 2 AM, listening to whoops in the callejones, the alleys that cross in front of our house. Someone had taken one of the usual inhalants and was acting out in the usual way, roaring at the neighbors, as if they were responsible for all his pains. I watched on the camera monitor for a while. Unfortunately, by mistake, we had hit the wrong buttons somewhere along the line, and the picture keeps changing from camera 1 to camera 2 to 3 to 4, so you can’t studying the situation or track someone’s movement. Delinquent behavior was occurring, but I could only catch snatches of it.

Only that morning, I had reprimanded young M, whom no one washes, for not being at the art workshop being offered at S’s tienda–store–two blocks up the stairs. I yelled up at his sister, whose head I could see above the half-wall on their roof.

“Where’s M?” I called up. “He not at the workshop.”

She looked down with a kind of shrug-of-the-shoulders expression.

“Where’s M?” I asked again, not letting myself be put off.

M appeared at an open window one story lower. His face was as blank as his sister’s.

“Why aren’t you at the workshop?” I ask. His eyes shifted around, as he looked for an answer. Everything about his face told me that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t going.

“It’s just that I have to hold tools for someone,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” I replied. “A lot of people have worked really hard to set this up for you. Why aren’t you going?”

He disappeared, then appeared around the corner, on my level, in the callejón.

M is a practiced con-artist, best at trying to get money out of you with the most outlandish stories of why he has to have it. D has told him there will be no more money until she has talked with his teacher and his parent figures (the father is not interested in him) present a financial report of money-in and money-out. They seem to have a record of complicity in M’s stories and reasons. The children come saying there is no food to eat. It is hard to say no. We have given food, but we no longer give money.

He was beginning up the steps with me. He looked back, as if he was worried about pressure coming from somewhere else: his mother. I suspected she had told him he didn’t have to go.

“You have a commitment,” I told him, as we climbed toward S’s tienda and the workshop. I used the word commitment because M always seems to be sliding in the other direction—no commitment toward anyone including himself and any kind of future.

“You know, I’m disappointed in you, M. A lot of people are coming together to offer you something worthwhile—the history of Mexican art—and you can’t be bothered to get your ass off your chair and up the hill.”

He brought up his duty to hand someone tools. I told him he didn’t have that duty. He had a duty to attend what M and others had worked hard to organize.

“Do you want to become a pandillero–a thug?” I asked him. I knew there was a constant suck on him in that direction.

He looked at me, shocked that I could think such a thing. I thought of my own father’s gruff guidance as I marched M toward something worthwhile. Are you going to do the right thing, or not?

We entered S’s tienda. S was at the front, selling tacos with fresh goat meat. I had met the animal earlier. Various parts of him had been stewing since the night before. M was delaying. He said he had to throw his plastic cup away. I took it out of his hand. I would throw it a way. S was watching me. I rolled my eyes. S gave a little nod. He knew the story. M had to buy a candy bar. A, S’s wife, sold it to him. He opened it and casually took a bite. In that moment, he was a tough guy that had important things to do in his life—besides attending workshops.

I mounted the stairs behind him. I got him a chair and planted him across from A, the young volunteer teacher—a theater major from the university, coming from the young citizen’s group called 473, which is our area code in Mexico. I drew up a chair and sat behind M—like a sprawled goatherd dog keeping tabs on one of his goats—a goat boy that possibly still had a future if he felt that anybody at all gave a damn about him.

Between 1 and 2 AM, the local losers—D disapproves of dehumanizing terms—had a rock fight with another gang a few houses down from us, broke the streetlight in front of our house, smashed open the steel door to the vacant lot and knocked out one of the adjoining metal panels, and terrified the neighborhood with their bellowing. Various young women fluttered around one of them (I caught glimpses of this on the always changing cameras), trying to return him to the privada–the side alley–before the police arrived in their knee guards, plastic shields, and metal clubs. Apparently, each neighbor thought the other would call the police—and no one did. The police did not arrive, and the boys-without-futures had one more spell of violence and chaos.